


a case of the mondays

by Izzyv1o



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Cameo by CrashKeys, Case Fic, Codependent Siblings, Crushes, F/F, Fluff, Post-Canon, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-01 05:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12149715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzyv1o/pseuds/Izzyv1o
Summary: or, 5 times Alice and Clover didn't kiss........





	1. one: taking them to the next level

**Author's Note:**

  * For [airdeari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/airdeari/gifts).



> tags, etc will be added as the story goes.
> 
> 2017 is the year of re-learning to write self-indulgent nonsense. this fic was gonna be cute and kinda short and then k had to go and see plot points in throwaway lines, so here we are. 
> 
> this is also for k because hey, thanks for pushing me to play the games. I love these crazy kids.

“Hold the elevator!”

Clover threw her hand forward. She only had the elevator to herself because she hadn’t asked the same when the last car departed. After the elevator door retreated from her arm, she looked up to see who was approaching.

_Oh._

She tugged the hem of her skirt down and checked her hair in the reflection on the walls. There were no glaring flyaways and the frizz was as minimal as it ever got. She didn’t have time for further surreptitious examination before the woman stepped into the elevator. Clover tried to keep her eyes forward, but she couldn’t ignore the way her suit jacket moved as she reached to press a button. Her hand hovered for a moment but withdrew when she saw the selected floor.

“Thanks,” she said, and Clover barely remembered to take her arm out of the way as the elevator doors began to close, let alone manage to form a coherent response.

“Did you lose any?”

Clover focused back in and traced her gaze. Right. There was a coffee cup in her right hand, the one attached to the arm she threw out to stop the doors. She twisted her wrist and felt the liquid slosh around within the styrofoam. Some of the drink spilled out of the lid and joined the wet tracks on the back of her hand.

“Not much, if it’s still this full,” Clover replied, weighing the choice between letting the liquid dry and leave a sticky spot on her hand and licking it off. 

She was saved from deciding when the woman — Alice, she could think her name. It’s not like the thought could summon her when she’s already here — offered a tissue from the depths of her bag. 

She took it with a smile and a rushed “Thanks,” wiping off her hand and shoving the tissue into her own bag, aiming for the little pocket on the side. It didn’t fall out as soon as she let go; that counted as a win this early in the day.

“How are your trainings going?” Alice asked, and Clover hated the polite disinterest in her voice. Her trainings were going well enough to pick up on that.

“There’s a lot of them, but they’re going.” There wasn’t really a good way to admit that she was in way over her head and come out of it sounding cool. Plus, at an organization like this, who knew exactly who they each reported back to? She didn’t want her supervisors to have another reason to scrutinize her performance.

The elevator stopped before she figured out what to say to keep the conversation alive. It was probably for the best. Clover waved at Alice on her way out the door, grimacing when she felt a drip as the coffee cup once again spilled over.

She hurried off towards her desk before Alice could comment on her clumsiness. At least this was one benefit of the bogged down commute nearly making her late — the latte once again covering her skin was still warm, but not actually hot enough to hurt.

This time, she licked the back of her hand clean as she settled in at her desk.

She avoided eye contact with the agent at the desk across from hers while she paged through the memos that made their way onto her desk overnight. None of it required a security clearance, but then again she barely had one.

There were emails waiting for her attention when she signed in to the computer, and she barely held in a groan on reading the previews. 

It was going to be another long day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> working title for this chapter: _clover you useless lesbian <3_


	2. Interlude: The Best Brother and Sister Pair in the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Never let your siblings know your weaknesses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please consider using a screen reader on all messages from clover to light. If you’re not up for that, i’m linking to the important one at the end of the chapter ;)

the best brother-and-sister-pair in the world  
  
**Today** 11:31 AM  
**Clover** : do normal people normally make small talk in elevators?  
**Clover** : im asking for a friend  
**light of my life** : Clover, it’s the middle of the day. Do you not have trainings to attend?  
**Clover** : maybe this is for a training. you dont know  
**Clover** : and anywy  
**Clover** : just because you tricked them into making you a “““reserve agent””” or whatever you sold them on  
**Clover** : doesnt mean you get to attakc me like this  
**light of my life** : I think you’ll find 19 years of being your brother grants me that right.  
**Clover** : i çãňŧ ūñdêrßtäñd yóú. ï öñly åççèpt mêšśägēś íñ thíš fōŕmåt  
**light of my life** : Your accepted format is also accepted by my screen reader. What a coincidence.  
**Clover** : (69 emojis, telling a pretty great story, if Clover may say so herself.)  
**Clover** : i kno wyour screen reader accepted that message too hope it had fun ;)  
**Today** 11:49 AM  
**light of my life** :  Convenience store, really?  
**Today** 1:42 PM  
**Clover** : listeen, no one but your reader even cares what theyre ““officially”” supposed to be.  
**Clover** : you just gotta go with the flow of the message  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a text-to-speech rendition of clover's great masterpiece](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1pROhbUFJzcNzV4UU42ZGpzcUE/view?usp=sharing)
> 
> and [a tutorial on formatting text messages and emoji for ao3, for the curious](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6434845?view_full_work=true)


	3. two: all ice cream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hmmm something's up, maybe?

Alice kept her eyes straight ahead as she walked, through the office and to the stairs. Taking the elevator would be far too much of a risk. That sort of a confined space, with the uncontrolled variable of fellow passengers potentially increasing at each floor was unacceptable. It was the expected exit route, though. A deviation may look suspicious in the security feed.

There was a much lower chance of a hostile encounter on the stairs, though. It was the safer choice overall. She went down the flights, ready to step out at any floor if someone were to enter and approach her, maintaining a deliberately casual pace. Nothing to see here, no reason to look twice, just another woman in an expensive business suit, making her way across the building’s lobby.

She only pulled her phone out of her bag when she was a block away and sure no one was following after her.

####  _9:52 PM_

_Well, shit_. She knew it was getting late, but combined with the 8:30 am meeting that had her arriving early, this was the third day this week she worked a nearly fourteen-hour day. Her supervisors hadn’t even commented on it.

She made her way home, trying to figure out why exactly she’d even stayed so late. There were no big missions being run or prepped. No recent breaks in the hunt for the terrorists, either. Nothing but a constant stream of people stopping by with “just one more thing” for her to do. And nothing but an awareness of the clock pushing her to leave.

Her stomach growled and Alice tried to remember if she’d grabbed a snack after the third meeting ended at 4. She couldn’t remember — probably a ‘no,’ then. She got off the train a stop early to stop in at the market. Maybe next time she’d have the chance to call for takeout on her way out of the office, but tonight it hadn’t happened. She could think of three discrete times she nearly called for food, sure she would be leaving in under ten minutes. Each moment was shortly followed by an emergency favor or meeting. Her food would have been cold on her doorstep before she’d even shut down her machine.

She was staring blearily into one of the freezers at the back of the store when she caught a mass of pink reflected in the glass. She lost the sightline as she opened the door, so she picked a couple of meals at random, closing the case and dropping them into her basket before turning down the aisle.

While there were, doubtlessly, many people in the greater Los Angeles area with pink hair, even hair this very shade, Alice was sure there were no others with quite so much of it.

She watched as Clover dug through the shelves of ice cream pints, a box of pop-tarts stuck under the arm propping open the door. She was going to leave her be when Clover leaned too far forward and lost her balance as her left arm extended to keep the door in position.

Alice was moving even before the box of pastries hit the floor.

She made her way down the aisle and was offering up the dropped box by the time Clover fully disentangled herself from the confines of the freezer.

As Clover turned to stare at her, Alice tried for an inoffensive smile and said, “I think you dropped these.”

“What are you doing here,” she asked, grabbing the box with the hand that wasn’t trying to keep a grip on two pints at once.

There was a hardness in her eyes, despite the way the rest of her seemed to have turned soft. This was not the Clover she saw in the office, dressed in textbook business casual and looking largely uncomfortable for it. The look she was receiving now, though, would have fit right in among the cubicles and rows of standing desks.

“It might relieve you to learn,” Alice replied, stopping herself from grabbing one of the slipping ice creams by brushing her hair behind her ear, “that the SOIS doesn’t require all active agents to live on base. As such, I am allowed to leave and, on occasion, stop at the store to buy food.” She paused to second-guess herself before she added, “Well, at least until my upgrade to a robot body has been made.”

“But you’re still dressed for work.” Clover brushed past her joke and looked her up and down, taking in her suit and the laptop bag slung over her shoulder. “Why would you still be ready to work this late unless you’re here _on_ work?”

Alice didn’t try very hard to hide the roll of her eyes.

“I’m on my way home. I live about a block away, not that you have the clearance to know, and I’m still dressed for work because I only just got out. I just stopped in for a wonderfully inspired dinner.” She gestured with the basket in her hand.

If anything, her words made Clover look more unhappy.

“They made you stay this late? Are you serious??” She didn’t give Alice a chance to do more than give a slight shrug. “Was there at least some big change in a case? Did you catch someone? Send out for warrants? Anything??”

With the last question, Clover threw her arms out in a rather expressive gesture of disbelief, and the ice cream cartons left their precarious placement in her hand and went rolling down the aisles towards the front of the store.

Alice caught the look on her face and moved to catch one while Clover went after the other. They met up near the front of the store, and Alice gave the pint over without comment. 

She looked to Clover as they moved towards the registers, but she was studiously facing ahead. There was even still a slight flush on her cheeks from the exertion of chasing after rogue ice cream. She knew how to take a hint, so Alice waited until she was checked out and ready to go before she turned back to Clover. 

“I’m sure I’ll see you at the office tomorrow. And by the way,” she brought her eyes up to meet Clover’s, “nice pants.”

She was out the door before Clover had even looked down to see her pants, pastel pink and covered with four-leaf clovers.

The noise Clover made as the doors closed almost made being stuck at work so late worth it.

Almost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here you can see bits of the workweek when I started this thing..... : *  
> (Working title: _Alice needs a vacation_ )


	4. Interlude: Job Prospects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (do you get it? it's because they're all criminals in one timeline or another)

in-n-outlaws  
  
**Today** 10:37 PM  
**Clover** : So  
**Clover** :  if i took that job with your privatized shady organization and left the shady government organization   
**Clover** :  would you guys also have me followed outside of work?  
**Akane** : I wouldn’t have to spy on you.  
**Akane** :  I already know everything   
**Aoi** : who says I’m not spying on you?  
**Aoi** : I’m kind of offended here  
**Aoi** : I’m in your apartment literally all the time  
**Clover** :  so you want me to tell light you’re only with him to spy on us?   
**Clover** :  im sure he’ll love that  
**Aoi** : wait.  
**Today** 10:52 PM  
**Aoi** : clover?  



	5. three: cheaper than therapy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This got out of hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, Kit, your birthday was perfectly timed to nudge me into finishing this bit. Thank you for that! :*

Clover yanked the door closed behind her, and the response to the sudden noise was near-immediate.

“I thought your nap earlier was supposed to calm you down.”

She dropped her bag on the counter and moved to the doorway to look at her brother as he sat picking out phrases on his harp. She listened to the familiar patterns for a moment before she responded.

“That could have been the wind slamming the door, you know.”

She heard him snort as she stepped back in the kitchen for the ice cream and some spoons.

“Clover.” 

“You don’t have to sound so disappointed,” she muttered as she sat down at the corner of the couch. 

“Clover. We live on the second floor. On the other side of that door is an interior hallway with no windows. There is no possible source of wind.”

Clover threw the second spoon at him.

The startled breath he let out when it hit him in the shoulder was pretty satisfying, but then he had to go and grab it on the rebound, catching it before it could land in his lap.

“Plastic?” The disdain in Light’s voice was only matched by the look on his face. “Surely we have clean spoons. The dishwasher just ran yesterday.”

She stuck her tongue out at him and blew a raspberry so she could be sure he knew what she was doing. He was not deterred.

“Are you going to tell me why we’re having ice cream this late,” Light asked, “or do I have to guess?” 

Clover shoved a spoonful into her mouth before passing the ice cream over. 

“It’s not even eleven yet. It hardly counts as ‘this late.’” 

“Ah, so you do want me to guess.” Light paused to taste the ice cream. “Hm, mint cookies and cream, this does narrow things down.”

He stood and moved to sit with her on the couch, but Clover leaned away, a pout on her face. “Don’t you act like you know exactly what this is about, mister! There’s not even a ‘this’ to be about anything!”

He waited a full minute before responding. “Clover,” he said, and she really wished that there was something playing in the background. Even talk radio would be better than his patient silence.

“Clover, you were practicing transmitting to me just yesterday. You’re not even trying very hard to convince me nothing is wrong now. If you truly wish not to talk about it, I will let it go, but I know it’s been on your mind for quite some time now.”

Clover shoved her spoon into the ice cream container and levered herself off of the couch. She walked across the room and picked up a seashell from the bookshelf, feeling along its grooves as she made her way around the room. 

When she came home exhausted after work, she’d barely gotten into comfy clothes before she collapsed in her bed. Instead of falling into a night’s rest, she found herself awake after only a couple of hours, with more energy than she could use. Even pacing around the room didn’t do much more than spread the energy around. She had walked down to the store to work some of it off, grabbing whatever called to her as she walked down the aisles. It had nearly worked, too.

She certainly hadn’t planned to see Alice there, but of course that just brought all the nervous energy rushing back, and then some.

“I’m not…” She moved the seashell to her other hand, holding it up to her ear even though it was too small to produce a distinct sound. “I can’t…” She paused mid-step.

Light kept his head turned in her direction, though he did not speak.

“When we started with the SOIS, there was so much to do in hunting down Free The Soul, you know? It was one training after the next and then there were undercover missions, and all that pressure and excitement meant I never really stopped to think about things.” Not until she’d messed up and gotten captured — twice. Nothing like waking up in a strange place to make you start re-evaluating your life choices.

She clenched her hands, feeling the ridges and shape of the shell dig in against her palm. It felt real. She squeezed a little harder, and began to walk around the room again. Her grip relaxed and clenched at every other step.

“Now that things are more quiet, I just.” She stopped to look out the window, but kept focusing more on Light reflected behind her than the city outside. “It was the clear choice after… after last time, but now that whatever happened at New Year's’ has happened, are we really needed so much? I mean I’m not even that good of an agent.”

She let out a bitter laugh as she turned back towards the couch, moving across to the kitchen doorway and turning rather forcefully once she got there.

“What kind of worthwhile agent still needs this much training? I can’t even reliably transmit to you, and let’s not pretend I’m any sort of asset in the field with my acting skills. I mean, I get distracted too often even before I need to start acting. I’m a liability in the field, and they haven’t been able to teach me anything else that would make me useful to them. I’m not a good analyst, or a skilled hacker, or even good at people-wrangling.” 

She let out a sigh as she continued to walk around, but as soon as she passed in front of the couch, Light grabbed her arm and pulled her down. She landed with her legs across his lap and an excellent view of the satisfied smile he sent in her direction.

“That wasn’t very nice!” she scolded, crossing her arms and pretending very hard that she hadn’t just shrieked as she fell.

“The things you were saying about yourself weren’t very nice, either. Nor was making me follow your labyrinthine path around the room,” Light replied, without a trace of guilt. “Now, you were just saying how you feel like you don’t deserve the job you were begged to accept or the generous salary we negotiated for ourselves. Were you going to go on to tell me you’re going to quit and move back home with our mother?”

“Hey! It’s — it’s not like that, okay?” She could only splutter for a minute, denying the accusations but unable to articulate a solid defense. She pressed both hands together against the shell, glad she didn’t drop it when she was snatched. One of the pointier points was starting to dig in. “There’s no way I’d be caught dead moving back in with mom,” she muttered.

“But you are going to quit,” Light prodded, when it was clear she had nothing more to add. It wasn’t a question.

“I’m not trying to run away or move back or anything. It’s just.” She paused for long enough that Light moved to press his hands against her knees while she thought her words through. His grip wasn’t quite as hard as hers was on the shell, but it had nearly the same effect.

“Do you remember them talking about college in our orientation?” He shook his head, a slight frown appearing as he tried to trace the leap. “They said they give out fake degrees when they need them on a case, something about allocating resources to best suit their needs. Standard procedures.” Clover shifted on the couch, leaning forward so she could rest her shoulder against him.

“What they do, though, is take someone with a degree and fake the who, where, and when of it. They can’t do that with me if I don’t have a degree to begin with, you know? Maybe they’ll let me go, and I’ll think about coming back once I’ve got some skills to work with, like a normal person.”

Light let out a considering hum, and his arm came up around her shoulders. 

“Has anyone at the SOIS given any indication that you lack the skills to do your job?” he asked, an edge in his voice.

Clover stilled where she sat. “Well, maybe not with those words, but—”

Light didn’t let her finish.

“I think you should consider,” he said, measuring his words, “that a factor in the timing of this decision may be a need to reject the SOIS before they can reject you. Do you wish to go to college to further your education or your career? Why does it appeal to you now, when you refused to consider attending for so many years? Or is this on your mind because it would be a reason to quit?” 

By the end of his first sentence she had tensed up, and when he finished speaking the only thing that kept her seated was his arm across her shoulders, his grip a tense warning. Standing would be permitted, but taken as a dismissal. He would not linger to hear her out. 

Clover brought her hands together more forcefully, until the bite against her palm made her take a breath.

“I’ll think about that,” she finally said. “It’s not like I can just up and go tomorrow, anyway. I’m sure there’s like a billion clauses in the contracts we signed that prevent us from leaving at will.”

There was an odd sort of pull there, between the impatient desire to leave and the knowledge that she had time to plan what happened next. 

Light waited until the tension eased out of her before he spoke again.

“And what, in particular, led to this coming to a head at the store?”

His words called her attention back to their ice cream. Where did it —? Ah, on the coffee table, dripping condensation into what would surely become a lovely ring, and more than a little melted inside. She grabbed a spoonful anyway.

“I might have run into Alice,” she admitted, mouth full of ice cream, words coming out garbled. She did not repeat herself after she swallowed.

“Oh?”

Clover stuck her tongue out around her next spoonful of ice cream.

“If you’re looking for information, you’re going to have to actually ask questions,” she scolded, thumping him in the chest with the hand not digging in the ice cream carton. “I’m not — I’m — I’m not a _mind reader_ , you know!” 

_Of course not. That would be absurd._ Her giggle fit kept her from seeing his face, but she felt the amusement he sent over the fields with his response and the vibrations of his chest as he stifled his laughter.

When they’d both calmed down, he asked again. “What about your encounter with Alice at the store triggered these thoughts? Was it her height advantage? Her quiet command of a room? Her expert application of the ‘no makeup’ makeup look that you’ve mooned over for months? Was she wearing one of those _ridiculous_ outfi—”

“I never should have transmitted to you that day! You’re never gonna let it go!!”

His reply was muffled by the hand she left pressed against his mouth.

“Anyway, it’s not about whatever it is you think you’re trying to suggest. She’s just. And I keep having to work with her. How am I supposed to work with her when she’s so much better than I’ll ever be?”

Light took advantage of her distraction to free his mouth, pulling the spoon from her hand as he removed it from his face. “She has twice failed to prevent your capture. She allowed you, a new agent with limited training, to embark on a mission with intel so flawed you walked into a trap and were held against your will. She is clearly not the perfect agent you’ve built her up to be.”

Clover threw her hands up in the air.

The shell she had been holding clattered to the floor and she groaned, “ _Light…_ ”

“It seemed a necessary reminder.” He neither sounded nor looked apologetic. “If you are going to continue to tear yourself down to build your image of her up, I'm going to remind you of her fallibility.”

“But maybe she’s not the problem!” 

The words came out louder than she intended.

Light tilted his head, his eyebrows furrowed.

“I’m. I’m sorry,” Clover said, much more softly, cutting him off before he began to dig. “I didn’t mean to yell. But I don’t think you can place the failings of an entire organization on one agent.”

She got up with a sigh, picked up the ice cream, and took it back to the kitchen. Her stomach was feeling rather sour, all of a sudden.

“Perhaps there are points in this argument we both can concede.”

She shook the second ice cream carton to feel the contents sloshing inside and frowned at it. Why couldn’t she have remembered to put it away when she got back?

Light cleared his throat. Clover looked away from the open freezer to see him standing in the doorway.

Once she closed the door with a soft _thunk_ she sighed and approached him, slowly leaning into him as she yielded, “Yeah, okay, you’re sorry, I’m sorry, apologies accepted.”

She was leaning close enough that she could hear him inhale to respond. She leaned a little harder and heard him let the breath out slowly and lean back into her instead. 

“That’s what I thought.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No harps were harmed in the making of this chapter


End file.
